


Dark Night

by ArtemisStyx



Category: Original Work
Genre: Battle of Stalingrad, Eastern Front, Gen, Great Patriotic War, Slice of Life, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29051058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisStyx/pseuds/ArtemisStyx
Summary: "Darkest of nights!Only whistling bullets in steppes,Only wind droning on in the wires,Stars are sparkling quietly..."A calm night in the trenches west of Stalingrad.
Kudos: 1





	Dark Night

The small campfire in his section's dugout crackled with flame, providing welcome warmth in the cool summer night. An old blackened kettle with slowly boiling water sat atop it, gently purring as liquid turned to vapor.

The familiar roar of Stuka engines had gone away for the night, not a single German panzer in sight. Distant cracks of single rifle fire and the occasional booms of an artillery shell exploding reverberated through the night.

With an exhausted sigh, he turned away from the front and joined his comrades around the fire, sitting down on the cold dry dirt. A tired smile graced his lips when the corporal walked up with an old, beat up guitar that was missing a string.

That guitar may as well have been the standard of his section, he morosely thought to himself. Rescued from a bombed out building by a plucky private whose name he could scarcely remember – the poor sod got torn apart by a mortar shell, – then carried on his old sergeant's back in the frantic retreat from Maykop before his trench was strafed by a 109... So many hands had held that guitar, and he just knew that many more would hold it after the corporal had gotten unlucky one final time.

He was pulled away from his despondent thoughts when the conversation died down, as the man began gently strumming a song. A solemn melody, slow and mournful.

It wasn't very good, but he didn't care. After the long sitting around, the miserable droning of engine and the incessant gunfire, the simple music of a man's hands on an old instrument was a relief.

He watched the fire bounce and flicker across the faces of his comrades, all of them quietly listening to the song. The dark-haired private they'd picked up in the retreat from Maykop sat next to him, his puffy and burnt out eyes staring vacantly into the dancing flames.

He was all too familiar with that stare. He'd seen it in the mirror so many times before. All the hope and pain, the soulfulness and emptiness of a man's life distilled into those vacant eyes.

The private had nowhere to go. Neither did he, nor the rest of the men in his section. It was fight or die. No middle ground. And he knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he would not survive.

The only thing left to do was to make the most of the time he had left.

He cast a glance over his comrades, who seemed to be equally consumed by their own musings. This little community of soldiers, this flicker of humanity in the depths of hell, was all he had left. He cherished it with a fierce joy, a fierce freedom to be found in the smallest acts of kindness. He put away his cares and woes, his love for family and his friends, into the tiny corner of his mind that he reserved for music, and enjoyed this fleeting moment of peace.

The song drew to its conclusion, and the section gave a weak round of applause that got drowned out by a shell going off somewhere in the distance. One of the men tossed a bottle into the makeshift circle – vodka, apparently stolen from the Commissar. They all took a shot, and the corporal picked up the guitar again.

Then, an explosion. And nothing.


End file.
